"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Jan 25, 2012

Cat's Paw Choosing

My cats sit at their food bowls off feeding times, certain in the magic efficacy of their own corporeal presences. Looking up with expectant eyes, as if to suggest to me by mystical notions that, yes, their being at the bowl is all the sign I need that they too have a vested interest in the outcome of my actions.

And when I do not feed them directly, even if only an hour after their last feeding, they yet persist. Eyes to empty bowl, and then to me. And back to the bowls again. Doing their cat sorcery.

I do not feed them. Not until it's the time arbitrarily set by the human gods who occupy these rooms.

But they insist on making the show anyway, convinced of their magic prowess. Certain that they have moved me to pity. Sure that their arrival at the place is all they need to achieve their ends.

It reminds me, most of all, of Americans queuing up at the polls on voting day.

8 comments:

Pharrell said...

or: does it remind you of humans occupying Zuccotti Park?


"Certain that they have moved me to pity. Sure that their arrival at the place is all they need to achieve their ends."

Jack Crow said...

Pharrell,

I have fewer opinions about Occupy NY now than I did a month ago, but I think the showing up there possesses a distinction, in that it at least must be lived and remembered.

mp said...

the loveliest thing you've written in a while.

Red Queen said...

Bravo!!!!!!! There is a reason why so many of us have blog crushes on you and this post is it.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

They just want to make sure you don't forget. Can't leave these important matters to chance, you know.
~

Landru said...

Heh. Nicely played.

Unknown said...

I view voting as something akin to shooting yourself in the head. On second thought shooting myself in the head might prove more productive than voting. If I survived I might get some good drugs.

Jack Crow said...

Humbled, all.